End Polio Now

£37,575.88 raised so far towards £40,000 Guernsey target

Raising £40,000 in Guernsey to raise £240,000

The Guernsey Overseas Aid Commission (the
Commission) has pledged to match fund the fundraising efforts by the Rotary
Club of Guernsey & Rotary Guernesiais for the historic effort to
eradicate only the second disease in human history, polio.

In reaching its decision to partner with the
Rotary in Guernsey, the Commission noted that they had already raised over £66,000 since 2006.

The fundraising agreement will see the Commission
match funding every pound raised by the island’s two Rotary clubs up to an
overall total of £40,000 thus doubling the money they raise to £80,000. As
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already agreed to match fund the
money raised by Rotary on the basis of £2 for every £1 raised, up to an
additional £160,000 will be added to the money raised here in Guernsey.

In other words, the fundraising by the Rotary clubs in
Guernsey and the Commission’s pledge of £40,000 could generate a total
of up to £240,000 in support of Rotary’s work to end the paralyzing disease.

Purple for
Polio - Purple Pinkies!

Rotary “End
Polio Now” campaign

What is a Purple
Pinkie?

When
immunising literally millions of children against polio in a single day across
an entire country such as India the only way you can possibly identify which
children have received their vaccine is by painting the end of their little
finger on their left hand with PURPLE dye

What is
Polio?

A
highly infectious, crippling and life threatening virus that mainly affects
children under 5 years of age and can.
There is NO Cure but it can be prevented by a simple vaccine costing
just 20 pence

Polio was
eradicated many years ago wasn’t it?

No

The
last case in Guernsey was in 1959 but there are still 2 countries in the world
where polio is still endemic (Afghanistan & Pakistan). Nigeria, a country that had the highest polio
cases in the world, hasn’t seen a wild polio case since July 2014 and was, on
25th Sept 2015, declared to no longer be polio endemic (virus in the
environment). It cannot be declared
polio free until Autumn 2017 and there cannot be a single case of polio between
now and then

Why does it
matter to us here in Guernsey?

As
long as there is one single child anywhere in the world with the polio virus
there is the danger of countries being re-infected. If we stop the End Polio Now programme now
before polio has literally been wiped off the planet then within 10 years there
would be an estimated 200,000 new cases of paralysis every single year
including countries that have long been free of the disease

Why is
Rotary involved?

Rotary
made a promise in 1985 that it would free the world of this terrible
disease. When we started the campaign there
were more than 1,000 cases DAILY across 125 countries. In the first half of 2015 there have been
just 33 cases in only 2 countries

Why is
Rotary still involved?

Rotarians,
working with their partners at the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the US
Centres for Disease Control & Prevention are fully committed to finishing
the job we started 30 years ago. That
work can only be done with funding and support from the world’s national &
local governments, the huge encouragement and support from the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and many many other supporters large and small across
the globe

What does
this all cost?

At
present just 20 pence provides a single dose of polio vaccine so literally
every single £1 really counts.

Altogether
more than $11 billion has been invested since 1985 with over 2.5 billion
children vaccinated.

The
net benefit of the entire polio eradication programme, including supplemental
vitamins often included with the oral vaccine, is estimated to have SAVED £90
billion and prevented an additional 5.4 million child deaths

How can I
help?

Ensure
you and your children have had their polio vaccines

Help
us with fund raising – just 20 pence can provide life saving vaccine

Spread
the word about what we are doing here in Guernsey. Talk to your family, friends & work
colleagues further afield and ask them to support the Rotary End Polio Now
campaign and to speak to their politicians to encourage their governments to
continue to support the campaign

Who do I
contact with more questions?

Rotarian
Jannine Birtwistle of the Rotary Club of
Guernsey (see below).